Friday, May 25, 2007

Haller's Army Troops Returning to the U.S.: Arrival of the Princess Matoika

This is the second in a series of articles that identifies returning Haller’s Army troops who had any history of association with the State of Michigan. This series details and identifies ten ships that made at least twelve trips returning the expatriated troops. The articles provide valuableinformation for researchers by identifying the following.

Who were the returning soldiers, what were their ages, marital status, profession and lastpermanent address prior to leaving for military duty in Europe?

Who was the nearest known person, relationship and address?

To what place was the expatriated soldier returning and in some instances, who was theperson he or she was joining?

Important information regarding their places of birth. (Most were born in Poland, and were classified as Ret. Res. (Returning Residents) some were born in the United States and were thus U.S. citizens.

Valuable emigration and/or naturalization information leads for many of the soldiers.

The second of the ships returning Haller’s Army troops was the Princess Matoika, which left the port of Danzig (now known as Gdańsk) on May 2, 1920, proceeded to Antwerp, Belgium and Southampton, England and arrived at New York May 23, 1920.

The Ship(2)The ship was built in Stettin (Polish Szczecin) as the steamship Kiautschou for the Hamburg-American Line. It had a passenger capacity of 327 passengers in 1st class, 103 in 2nd class, 80 in 3rd class, 1,700 in steerage and carried a crew of 230. In Feb 1904 it was sold to the North German Lloyd Line and renamed the Prinzess Alice. In Aug 1914 the Prinzess Alice was interred in Manila. On April6, 1917, it was seized by the US Shipping Board and renamed the Princess Matoika. In 1918 it became a US Navy transports and was handed back to the US Shipping Board in 1919. In 1920 it was chartered to the US Mail Steamship Company.

The Passengers(3)Passenger list information for the troops returning on the Matoika is contained in Volume 6406 that is available on LDS film #1571353. Thece are 1,707 returning troops listed on pages 184 through 320. Extracting each soldier’s name from the pages would be a project of great magnitude. Therefore this extraction is limited to those troops who either originally resided in, had relatives in, or were returning to the state of Michigan. This extraction has 205 soldiers listed. Four exceptions have been made to the previous guideline used (Michigan related troops) but are included in this Michigan extraction of 201 soldiers.

During the process of review I found potential leads to possible ancestors. The first, was Walter Pastula (the same name as my father) and the second Jan Pustola, both of New York. Walter Pastula coincidentally was reportedly born in Kolbuszowa, the birth area of my grandmother Rozalia Dluzeń Pastula. As an additional note of interest, two priests, Rev. Frs. Kowalski and Rozmus born in Poland were also part of the extraction, were from New York and added for interest.

Payment of passage was apparently split between the Polish and United States governments. The text for column 16 reads, ‘By whom was passage paid? Whether alien paid his own passage, whether paid by any other person, or by any corporation, society, municipality, or government.” An analysis of the passenger list pages “column 16” identifies that 703 soldiers had their passage paid by the Polish government, while 756 soldiers had their passage paid by the United States government. Eleven (11) pages were incorrectly noted or absent of any notation. These 11 pages list 248 soldiers whose payment of passage is not clear.

The DataThe format of data provided for each soldier is as follows. The surname appears first in bolded type, followed by the given name, then the page number and line sequence where the soldier is found, his age in the format “years/months”, followed by marital status (S=single, M=married, W=widower) occupation, last permanent location, the nearest person known and relationship with their address, the length of time at the last reported location, and finally the place of birth. In some instances a bonus appears providing information related to a naturalization or previous emigration.

Editor’s Note: It is standard practice that spellings from documents not be changed when extracting information from source records, even when it is known to be in error. Spellings included in these extractions are as they appeared in the passenger lists. When an item was subject to interpretation a question mark (?) has been inserted, to caution that the data was a best guess. Likewise when a guess was made, the offered interpretation has a question mark (?) following it.

(1) The New York Times.(2) Great Passenger Ships of the World, Volume I: 1858-1912, Arnold Kludas translated by Charles Hodges, first published in Germany under the title Die Grossen Passagiershiffe der Welt, Great Britain October 1975. ISBN 0-85059-174-0.(3) Church of the Latter-day Saints, Family History Library.

This article appeared in the Polish Genealogical Society of Michigan's Journal, The Polish Eaglet, Fall 2001, pps. 97-106. It is reprinted here with permission from the family of Robert Postula and the PGSM. All surnames are in bold text as is customary in The Polish Eaglet articles.